I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the fields of cell biology and immunology. More particularly, it concerns methods and compositions relating to the production of human monoclonal antibodies.
II. Description of Related Art
Current alternatives to vaccination are therapies consisting of antibiotics, antivirals or the passive transfer of antibodies, which are blood derived proteins that bind and neutralize pathogens. The source of antibodies may be a polyclonal supply, such as human or horse serum, or derived from a monoclonal source (single cell clone). With the technologic capability to control and select for specific antigen binding, monoclonal antibodies have yielded dramatic therapeutic benefits in cancer treatment worldwide. While some success in the treatment of infectious agents and toxins has also been observed with monoclonals, the potential for therapeutic and diagnostic agents remains largely untapped.
One particular impediment to the development of monoclonal antibodies for human therapy is the need to “humanize” such antibodies, which are generally made in mice, rats and rabbits. If human patients are administered such antibodies without humanized constant regions, they can suffer from “serum sickness,” literally meaning that an antibody is mounted by the recipient against the non-human antibody sequences. While humanizing monoclonal antibodies produced in research animals can avoid this problem, this does not come without a cost—both time and expense for humanization of antibodies are considerable, leading to a bottleneck when it comes to exploiting the use of monoclonal antibodies for therapy and diagnosis in humans.